Quaking in my boots, I made my eyes glare level with his.

“Listen to me, bo,” I bluffed, “I ain’t much on guff, and I don’t want specially to fight ... but I’m waiter in this mess room and you don’t pull anything like this here, unless you do it over my dead body.”

“That’s just what I will do ...  I’ll—­I’ll—­” and the chap, pale with what seemed insane rage, started to his feet.

“Ah, sit down!” I commanded, marvelling at my nerve, and pushing him violently by the shoulders back on the bench ... then, deliberately, I turned my back, and walked away, expecting any moment to have him on me like a clawing wild cat.

With seeming calm and nonchalance I made the kitchen.  With a semblance of outward serenity I picked up a rag and returned to wipe off the wall.  I was vastly relieved to find that the bluff had worked.

The Canuck was finishing his meal in silence.

From that moment till the end of the voyage he was as quiet and
Unobtrusive as anyone could wish him to be....

* * * * *

I have a curious habit of often waking up in the night from deep slumber, and breaking into laughter over some funny incident or other that has happened to me a long time ago ...  I have chuckled over this incident many times ... if that bully only knew how terrorised he really had me!...

* * * * *

It is impossible to describe the Georgian Bay and the beauty of its thousands of islands ... as we steamed through them in the dawn, they loomed about us through sun-golden violet mists....  Here as small as the chine of some swimming animal, there large enough for a small forest of trees to grow upon them....

* * * * *

Another storm ... on Lake Huron ... a fair-sized one.

I was walking along the deck, just after dawn, the waves riding and running and shattering aboard.  I carried the dinner bell, was ringing it for breakfast ... when the greatest wave I have ever seen on the Lakes came running, high-crested, toward the boat,—­that seemed to know what was happening, for it rose to meet it, like a sentient being....

The wave smashed ... hit the galley and washed over the top of it, catching me in a cataract as I hugged close.  I was driven hard against the taut cable wire that made our only railing.  For a moment I thought the water reaching up from over-side as the vessel lurched would clutch me and suck me down.

A close and breathless call.  A rending, splintering sound told me damage had been done.  I looked toward the captain’s cabin ... and laughed heartily, for all my discomfort and dangerous escape ... for the whole side of the cabin had been stove in,—­and, terrified, his eyes sticking out, in his dirty underclothes the captain had been hurtled forth, his face still stupid from sleep though full of fear.

I rushed up to him.  His drawers sagged pitiably with wet.